I picked up Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald from a friend. I have tickets to go see the author give an informal interview at the NAC at the end of the month and thought that I should at least read her most popular book.

Turns out I’ve already read it. I read it again anyway, because I only remembered two parts of the book, and by the time I did I was at least a third of the way through.

I have no idea how I forgot reading this book, because it’s certainly a story that sticks with you. The Pipers are one tragic family. Tragedy seems to flow through the very blood that connects them to each other. Every character is flawed, but mostly sympathetic (although I can’t seem to drag up any sympathy for James. By the end of the book I think he’s revolting), but they certainly makes some very bad choices.

It makes me sad that most of them never had a better end for themselves. Except for Lily and Anthony. But I suppose they deserve the ending since the way they came into the world was terrible.

I’ll just state straight out that I did not like this book. I didn’t hate it, but reading it was a chore every step of the way.

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse is a long, long book. Almost 700 pages. Unnecessarily long. Mosse likes to describe every bloody thing in the book. Every flower that the main character Alais looks at, from its colour to the way it slopes in the wind, is described, and I just don’t care.

It’s a semi-interesting story. The bandwagon plot of protecting/discovering the Grail (authors really need to stop with this one now). It really only gets good in the last 100 pages, and the whole story could have been told in that space.

It’s small positive parts are heavily outweighed by the crap. The length, the predictability, the stupid parallels (Alais/Alice, please). Not recommended.

I Trust Snape

Because I do.

I’m really rather shitty at dealing with change. I dislike that about myself.

So this past weekend my grandma had two strokes. She’s already got a myriad of other health problems, and we were worried that this might be the end.

Well, Grandma seems to be holding her own. My Mom and sisters saw her again yesterday and she was awake and mostly coherent, talking to them. They said she was repeating herself a lot, but wasn’t too bad, and the hospital was sending her back to her nursing home. She’s still haemorrhaging in her brain, which can really only go two ways. It may be fatal, but it may still heal itself. So again, hard to know where we stand, but going by what my family tells me, she’s hanging in there.
I swear the woman has more lives than a cat. I mean, I want her to live because she seems to want to (and because I’d miss her, of course), but I can’t help but worry that she’s really suffering.

So last Friday Kaybee and I went to Zaphod’s in an attempt to be all lesbian and shit and see the singer Melissa Ferrick. Neither one of us really knows any of her stuff, but she’s got quite the dyke following, so hey, it couldn’t hurt, right?

Well it seems she was supposed to be the opening act for one Luke Doucet. It turns out Melissa couldn’t make it at the last minute, but oh, happy accident! Luke Doucet kicks ass. He’s released three albums to date and writes a kickass blog on his website. I’m not sure which songs I heard him play, but at least a few had to do with his ex-girlfriend Emily.

He’s got this amazing Blues sound that you wouldn’t think could come from a Canadian boy. I’m a convert.